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AS Manchester United tumbled embarrassingly out of the Champions League, the UK View was largely one dominated by heavily critical takes on confounding tactics, bizarre decisions and disdain over a manager who quite simply failed on the biggest stage — a stage that used to be his.

Two goals to Wissam Ben Yedder, three shots on target for United and a stunning exit in which The Times’ Henry Winter asserted that Jose Mourinho’s men made a Sevilla side who are fifth in La Liga look like Barcelona. Correspondingly, Winter accused United and their negative boss of ‘cowardice.’

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The Special One’s tactical implosion drew the bore of the brunt, as pundits and journalists lined up to question why Mourinho would pull Marouane Fellaini from a four-month absence to start in United’s biggest match of the season. Let alone in place of Paul Pogba.

Football 365’s Sarah Winterburn labelled the decision “almost negligent and certainly inexplicable,” while ESPN’sMark Ogden utilised the Belgian’s bizarre inclusion as a metaphor for “precisely where the team is right now under Mourinho,”

Fellaini, a polarising character at the best of times, was deployed in a midfield role in the hope of his heightened aerial prowess providing a route to striker Romelu Lukaku. A decision which ex-Liverpool manager Graeme Souness said was indicative of a game plan not befitting arguably the world’s biggest club.

“They never did until Seville scored basically. They couldn’t get out of that second, third gear.

“No imagination. (They) resorted to just lumping it to a big centre forward, looking for second bits off him.

“Fellaini’s on the pitch - that tells you which way they want to go, thinking they’ll get something at a set-piece.

“It’s Manchester United we’re talking about. It’s Manchester United - the biggest club in the world arguably - playing football like that.

“It ain’t good enough.”

Souness’ comments were echoed by The Telegraph’s James Ducker, who pointed to an objectively apparent conclusion that this was a United side set up in a way that stifled any chance of creativity and joy in their football.

“All tactical preferences aside, it is hard not to conclude that this United team are better than that; they have more invention, more drive, more joy in their football than they were allowed to show over 180 guileless minutes,” he said.

“It should be a source of embarrassment that they looked so laboured, cocooned within the manager’s enduring defensive rage against the fifth best team in Spain.”

Mourinho was targeted by most as the figure blame for the calamity, with Ogden going as far as to label him “a man of out of touch.” But others took aim at the man who was meant to have been brought in to reinvigorate this Champions League campaign, but instead has proved the exact opposite – Alexis Sanchez.

Ducker was one of the many with the Chilean in their sights, suggesting that United fans could only be left hoping that their biggest name signing in recent times had sunk as low as he possibly could.

“United supporters arrived here wondering if this would be the night their new signing finally sparked into life. They will have left simply hoping this constituted rock bottom for Sánchez and that his standards cannot slip any further. “

He added that “No one embodied United’s huff and puff, their lack of imagination more than Sánchez,” while Red Devils legend Rio Ferdinand suggested that “he looks a shadow of the player he was, a stranger in this team.”

On the biggest of stages, as Sanchez was handed an opportunity to finally make his presence felt and prove himself the big game player his side sorely needed – he disappeared.

As Chris Wheeler, of the Daily Mail, put it “This was a night when Sanchez could have risen above the mediocrity of his first two months at Old Trafford. A night for the highest-paid player in the Premier League to put in a big performance on the big stage.”

Sanchez’s shift to the left wing, a role occupied expertly by Marcus Rashford to secure a crucial Premier League win over Liverpool on the weekend, forced the 20-year-old’s relocation to the opposite flank in a move which limited the influence of both players.

But the wide areas weren’t United’s only problem area, as Mark Unwin pointed out, their midfield was outplayed by a Sevilla central duo of ex-Stoke and Blackburn man Steven N’Zonzi and Ever Banega.

“The problem United had in midfield was not having a player who could utilise the ball in key areas. Without Paul Pogba or Ander Herrera, there was a lack of impetus for a team who must have felt they would not be troubled by their Spanish opponents,” Unwin wrote for Sky Sports.

Overall, it was a performance that ended in humiliation, on home turf, for an outfit who quite simply should be capable of more.

Camera IconSevilla players celebrate their second goalPicture: AFP

The Daily Mail’s Martin Samuel pointed out that the outing was an exposure of their limitations, and it certainly shapes as one which sends a resounding message about where the team is at.

“Meanwhile, the noise around Old Trafford was telling its own tale. The stunned silence when the goals went in, the frustration of the boos at the end. This was a long, long way from what was expected; and a long, longer way from what was good enough,” Samuel wrote.

“This was an uninspired, cautious display that ended in humiliation on their home turf. It exposed the limitations of this team, certainly their limitations if sent out to play in such an unimaginative way.”

Out of the Champions League, a season which promised so much is set to slow to a trickle, with the FA Cup and a second placed Premier League finish the only potential prizes to be taken from a campaign where the Red Devils have been ruthlessly outed as only the second best team in their own city let alone Europe.